To Florus 1.98

You are joined to Jovinian on one point. In the second book of his work he says that a baptized person cannot sin, while before baptism a person can both sin and refrain from sin. With you, then, he thinks that from the time of baptism a necessity of good is imposed on human beings. This is just as false as your belief that before baptism human beings possess a necessity of doing evil. For when you say, “A human being cannot will anything good unless helped by the one who cannot will evil” (Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 1.7), you mean that through sharing in grace and a good nature a person obtains the capacity to do good; you say, however, that this can happen from the time of baptism. Caught between impiety and fear, you have therefore fled to Jovinian's company, but have not yet left Mani's brothel. Yet Jovinian is as much more innocent than you as Mani is more profane than Jovinian.

To gather up our argument still more briefly: the Manichaean says, “In all human beings the nature of darkness, which inspires the evil will, sins and cannot do anything else.” You say, “In all human beings nature, infected by the darkness of the first sin and therefore the author of an evil will, sins and cannot will good.” Jovinian says, “The human will does indeed sin, but only up to baptism; afterward it can will nothing but good.” Catholics, that is, we, say that from beginning to end there is no compulsion from anything belonging to nature. In each person it is the will that sins, including before baptism; at the very time it sins it has the power to depart from evil and do good, so that freedom remains a reality.

None of you therefore possesses true doctrine. Nevertheless, since you set out from a single starting point of error, it would at least have been less dishonorable to accept the consequences. Since you say with Mani that sin occurs through an evil nature, that is, through defective freedom, you should also have said with him that it cannot be cleansed in any way. You do affirm this elsewhere; but you should have added its necessary consequence, that it therefore has no need of baptism's sacraments. Or if you assert with Jovinian that good desires are imprinted from the time faith is received, you should have said with him that nature was good even before baptism: although it had the capacity for evil, it did not have its necessity, and so by consecration it reached an unmistakable good. In this way, even if you opposed reason, at least you would not contradict the doctrines of those you follow.